Most of the popular browsers these days are based on one of the two open source rendering engines - khtml/WebKit and Gecko. The most popular browser, however, is based on proprietary technology: Internet Explorer. Even though IE made some progress during the past few years, it's no secret that it took Microsoft far too long to counter the success of Mozilla's Firefox. Currently, Microsoft is working (and thus, spending money) on Internet Explorer 8, and this prompted an audience member during a keynote by Steve Ballmer to ask an interesting question: is it worth spending money on IE, with so many open source engines readily available? Ballmer's reply may surprise you.
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Member since:2007-02-17
Apple didn't design Webkit either. Webkit is just a fork of KHTML. Designed by KDE.
No contest on the security front. All of the malware out there on the web that attacks via a browser does so via Trident, and none of it does so via KHTML/Webkit.
Member since:2005-11-16
"Apple didn't design Webkit either. Webkit is just a fork of KHTML. Designed by KDE. "
Please give the credit to who it is deserved to. Apple created webkit, starting from the code base of KHTML which was pretty much limited (it did not render correctly a LOT of web pages, it was unstable and relatively slow, but it was a small and clean code base that Apple was looking for to start upon) before Apple created webkit.
By itself, the first version of webkit that Apple built for Safari 1.0 was already a big change from the original KHTML and rapidly webkit became a complete independent project that was growing much faster as it was managed (and still is) by Apple.
Again webkit was born with Safari 1.0 and all the work on the initial version was done by Apple. And yes it is derived from KHTML but webkit is not a simple fork of KHTML (please don't say non sense), this a major rework of the code base and a large addition of features was done compared to the original KHTML.
Edited 2008-11-07 14:47 UTC
Member since:2008-05-26
Yes I know, Webkit was forked from a KDE project (KHTML), but Apple has a bad record for security, and they contribute a heck of a lot of code to Webkit (probably the biggest contributor). And Webkit is getting a new Javascript interpreter, contributed mostly by... Apple!
Webkit is not a big target as it currently has minimal use on open-source platforms and almost no use on Windows. Just because it hasn't been attacked, does not make it secure. I definitely have more faith in the security of KHTML, if it still exists, than I do Webkit.
Member since:
2008-05-26
Which is more secure; Trident or Webkit? Webkit is open-source, but then its biggest sponsor is Apple; they've never designed a secure piece of software. Ever. Except maybe A/UX.
Trident has had so many security problems during the IE 6 period, but then Microsoft completely overhauled it along with Windows.
I think Microsoft will stay with their regular web rendering engine and it's probably the better move.